Tuesday, December 20, 2011

How did you consecrate yourself and your staff?
Did you pray together?
Did you share a hymn or an inspirational verse with one another?
Did you do any form of consecration at all?

Certainly, there is much buzz about the separation of church and state when such a subject comes up. Do not dwell on what you cannot or should not do. Identify what you can do.

If you own the business, even if it is a franchise, you are welcome to offer staff members a period during the day where they can join others in prayer. Provide them with a place and time. Share how your faith has led you to the point of making such an offer.

Don't get preachy. Just make the offer.

You can do so by organizing a morning prayer meeting or devotional period 15 to 30 minutes prior to scheduled work time. This may work on those days where you have that dreaded morning meeting. Prepare for presentations by dotting each and every "i" and crossing each and every "t," but be sure to also solicit the prayers of your fellow Christians at work.

Be sure to let people know that it is not mandatory. Don't try to make it a full-blown worship service. Just offer it to them. Those who want it will surely show up and serve as the core group. Others will drop in as they find themselves in desperate need of prayer and support. Just make the offer where you can and get started, in prayer of course.

Friday, December 9, 2011

In ministry, we tend to do a lot of recruitment. We load up real heavy on recruiting people. We point out all of the finer points of the benefits of participating and what it really means to sign up for service within the ministry. We do a lot on the recruitment end.

So what about retention?

You can do mass recruitment. That's no problem. You need to retain volunteers in ministry on an individual basis. You need to give them one-on-one treatment in order to keep them in the loop and on the team.

Volunteer retention is based on:

Relationships: who knows who?

Relevance: how are people whom we know are impacted?

Resourcefulness: where can we help and how can we give others hope?

If we train 10 volunteers to serve for 12 months and impact 10 people per month each, you could have 1,200 impacts within a year. Think about that. 10 X 10 X 12 = 1,200. One hundred people could be impacted by 10 people. Imagine what a ministry of 20 or 25 people could do. Think about how much potential you lose when you have to replace people rather than keeping things going smoothly time after time.

About Me

Rev. Bruce Jackson is a man of God, author, and community activist. Rev. Bruce started Life Path Ministries & Services in San Diego, California. Visit https://sellfy.com/brucejackson/ for available titles published by Rev. Bruce. Short inspirations and other ideas appear online at www.twitter.com/lifepath01/ http://www.facebook.com/revbrucej. Visit The Ministry Mechanic for insights and inspirations for nonprofits, church leaders and Christian entrepreneurs.